Why MIDs and Netbooks Are Doomed

I started writing this post back in May, but got sidetracked and never finished it, partly because it sounded like sour grapes from someone who has used a netbook and didn’t like the user experience. The thing is, I don’t use a netbook, never wanted to use one, and the few times I have seen them I didn’t like the user experience. That’s the real reason I didn’t finish the post—I didn’t want to comment on something I didn’t know well.

The thing is, I really want to like netbooks. They would solve many problems in my life while introducing few others. I don’t mind small screens, can cope with small keyboards for a limited time, and I know precisely which apps require which hardware to run effectively. I even had a “netbook” once, a little Psion that fit my pocket, but I eventually abandoned it. What I don’t want is:

yet another device to feed—laptop and (non-smart) cell phone are plenty, thanks

a new algorithm for syncing local data, as not everything lives in the cloud (yet)(thankfully)

any device that solves 75% of a problem, yet requires 110% of my personal budget and replicates a device I already have (see #1)

Furthermore, I don’t think they are too expensive for what they are. Dropping prices will not sell more netbooks. Increasing performance will not sell more, either. Actually, I can’t think of a single thing that would cause me to augment my existing stable of computing power with yet another device, and that is the rub.

I am exactly the target market for netbooks, yet I don’t want one. That is why they will fail. There are a lot of people like me out there. We are already glutted with devices. Netbooks solve the same problems as notebooks, but at a higher price and with fewer options and lower performance. Smallness on its own is not a feature that grabs me unless it gets small enough that I can put it in my pocket.

All of this is based on my opinion. I am not presenting a very logical argument here because the market is not a logical beast. It is capricious and fickle, which is precisely why good ideas very often fail. To understand it, the logical thinker must shelve the logic and think like a fickle beast. The cost of failure is too high to depend on logic in a capricious world.

That being said, there are logical arguments, and Jason Hiner makes them quite well. The “that’s neat” response is not a long-term market driver. We encountered this at Transmeta back in 1999 trying to come up with a reference design for tablets—we called them “webpads”, and they bear a marked resemblance to today’s e-book readers, but they never took off (they were also far too expensive). For that matter, I think it remains to be seen whether e-book readers will take off, though as a device built to improve a specific user experience by using a people-friendly interface—e-ink in this case—they stand a good chance.

What I think might fit the sweet spot a little more closely is something like Dell’s new Latitude ON, which embeds a netbook-ish device inside a laptop. The tiny ARM-powered board shares keyboard, screen, and network connection and surfs and emails for 18 hours or more, and if I want more horsepower I can just push a button to boot or wake up the full laptop. That is a compromise I can live with. *

So, kudos to the netbook folks for trying. But what about MIDs? Are they in the same boat? I think that remains to be seen—the iTouch and Nokia N800 devices have certainly been popular among my geeky friends, but I have yet to see one in use that isn’t shadowed by the propeller on the user’s hat. It’s the “that’s neat” response again. I want to want one, but in reality I can’t justify it to my bank account or to my daily workflow. My immediate feeling is that the next generation of smartphones—especially the Motorola Droid—will make MIDs obsolete, but this will only happen in the US if they can break away from the usage models dominated by the carriers. The total cost of ownership is far, far too high. (See Droid and other smartphones compared by TCO.)

Here’s yet another angle: what is the logical difference between a MID that can read e-books, and an e-book reader that can browse the web? How about MID vs. smartphone? Which one would you buy, and why? Don’t be afraid to be illogical and capricious.

The main takeaway from all of this is that making a market in personal electronics is hard, and it is not getting easier or more obvious as technology improves. Making a market means building a product that provides a 100% solution for enough buyers to justify the cost of development, period. If that market is small or unsustainable, then it’s not a revolution, it’s a fad.

7 comments

If you are a business traveller, you won’t think in this way.
Netbook suits for my requirements. In some situations, even in my persoanl travels, I only need to check the email and do simple tasks on internet.
Netbooks can do these kinds of job and they are small and light.

Doesnt this discussion miss one wildcard entirely : ARM ( and to a lesser degree, MIPS ) SoCs, aimed at MIDs and Netbooks.
The battery life and price points that these enable, will shift the variables around quite a bit.

I agree that netbooks are a 100% solution for some people. I do travel for business, and a netbook would be maybe a 70% solution for me—so I’d have to bring a laptop along as well, which would defeat the purpose. For those who don’t need to write documentation or compile code on the road, very often a smartphone is all they really need, as it fits in their pocket and is not questioned by airport security. From what I have seen, read, and discussed with people at various conferences, there are few who need anything in the middle ground.

That being said, I am glad you (Michael) have found a device that suits your needs! I used a Psion 5a for that for two years before my needs changed. I simply don’t think there are enough users out there with that particular usage model to support an entire class of devices.

Regarding ARM, MIPS, PPC, and other non-x86 netbooks, I wish I could share your (kert’s) enthusiasm. There are ARM-based netbooks and MIDs on the market now and they are not taking the world by storm. I really don’t think that price, performance, or even UI is the key—the usage model itself is flawed because of the vast increase in performance/usability in smartphones and the low price point of new notebooks.

Having worked in a group that had a team dedicated a Netbook OS I’ve been exposed to several of these devices. After the “that’s cool” wore off I couldn’t seen how one would improve my life. Anyplace I could use a Netbook I could use my laptop. Mind you I’m probably not the target. I have to be able to write code, communicate with colleagues via a range of methods, and have CLI access to remote systems for administrative and trouble shooting purposes. I want projects like Moblin to succeed, but I don’t see it replacing what I currently use.

My wife bought a netbook against my better judgement because she already has full-blown work and home laptops. How many laps can one have? And I personally resent braindead devices that don’t let me have full control of what I want to do and how I want to work. Nix on netbooks (and net apps that just are not as powerful and fully featured and controllable as standalone apps–call me a dinosaur).

But, it turns out my wife bought the netbook for precise reasons–she commutes daily on a crowded bus that has Wi-fi, and the netbook lets her work in the space of her own seat where a laptop was too big. She’s pretty much only interested in catching up on her email and FB while commuting. She counts it as downtime. So the netbook is clearly a toy. As geeks we forget that not everyone wants full-powered devices. They want ones that let them do just want they want without having to be geeks. There is a very fractured market out there for this kind of semi-dead device.

In passing, Jefro, she (and I) are not sold on surfing the web on any Swiss-army phone-in-passing device, pocketability aside. There’s just not enough real estate, and what’s there is too small. What we fail to realize is that as we all get older and our eyesight gets worse, even with glasses, contacts, etc., small is a major detriment and deterrent. To my mind that’s why e-book devices do have a fighting chance against the iPhone, but it’s a window that’s closing fast. How did Microscum get to be the world’s dominant OS? Because it was good, or because it was first?

This comment reminds me the publications that were first made when the first netbooks appeared. Back then there was not even a name for the netbooks and most of them, maybe inspired by M$$$soft, doomed the idea of computing devices with modest hardware. But the time has shown otherwise.

I think that these posts neglect the idea that almost (If not all) the great maufacturers of Laptops have their own line of netbooks and there are no signs of reduction in the offert of netbooks.

Maybe there are interests involved on this publications or is just a biased opinion but for the developing countries the netbook idea is great, where you won’t see a Laptop below 300 US Dlls or a lot of people using a smartphone.

And personally most of the experiencies that I had with netbooks had been histories of success. Ihave configured at least 15 netbooks and I’ve seen poeple that I know and bought a netbook very happy with them. Maybe the key is to show what they can expect with an equipment of this kind.

And from an engineering point of view, I prefer a software that is efficient in a modest not-power-hungry system than a powerful hardware on an inneficient software which is usually the M$$$soft scenario. Obviusly I use light-efficient Linux distributions on most of the netbooks that I’ve configured, if the user wants windows, then I leave it as a second option which usually comes already installed by default on the netbook.

[…] 4 01 2010 Back in November, I posted a somewhat capricious article on why I thought Netbooks and MIDs are doomed. Several of you produced valid arguments both for and against—the form factor does indeed […]